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Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Ancient Genealogies support the Bible and Noahic Flood

It was the 1800's, a century when both Darwinism and Uniformitarianism would raise their ugly heads and cast ripples, nay, giant waves through the scientific community. Those waves kept going, sweeping into other disciplines such as History and Bible Studies and on until they washed back through the place they had begun, Philosophy. It was a tsunami that has done lasting damage and I am among those who work to repair and rebuild.

Darwinists fear the teaching of Intelligent Design even while loudly crying that it is "not science!" No, it is not their science because it doesn't fit into a materialist (some say naturalistic - To-may-toe, to-mah-toe) philosophy within which Darwinism must be encased. Darwinism doesn't play so well when all possibilities are allowed to be considered and Darwinists furiously fight to remain the only players allowed on the field. That way, they always win!

Once historical documents were cast aside or ignored by the powers that be because those documents did not fit the Catholic point of view. These were the days of the Catholic-church-as-totalitarians, days that produced the Inquisition and also, eventually, the pushback of Martin Luther and the Reformation. Yet many old documents remained obscure by omission rather than nonexistence. Later, when Darwinism came into bloom, there came the need to find long ages whenever possible. New textural criticisms of the Bible (the JPED Documentary Hypothesis in particular) arose, not from better information, but because there was a need to find long ages and discount all information that indicated otherwise. Few "theories" are as twisted and unlikely as the JPED and yet it is satisfactory to Darwinists because it casts doubt on the veracity of the book of Genesis.

"The evidence presented here points to the following conclusion: there is much more uniformity and much less fragmentation in the book of Genesis than generally assumed. The standard division of Genesis into J, E, and P strands should be discarded. This method of source criticism is a method of an earlier age, predominantly of the 19th century. If new approaches to the text, such as literary criticism of the type advanced here, deem the Documentary Hypothesis unreasonable and invalid, then source critics will have to rethink earlier conclusions and start anew." (p. 105 of The Redaction of Genesis by Rendsburg (Eisenbrauns: 1986) as quoted by Glen Miller.

Unfortunately long-agers, there are many other historical records that help prove that the Genesis account is genuine and remarkably accurate. These are records gleaned from different cultures and eras, many by peoples who did not interact and had no knowledge of the records held by others. These are records from all over the globe.

I may have mentioned previously that Noah is recorded in cultures around the globe as the patriarch that built the Ark and was preserved along with family and wildlife in the Noahic Flood. Some of the cultures that have an historical Noah include Hawaii (where he was called Nu-u), the Sudan (Nuh), China (Nu-Wah), the Amazon region (Noa), Phrygia (Noe) and among the Hottentots (Noh and Hiagnoh)(Hat tip to Chris Parker of S8int). But now let us take a closer look at historical records, some of which have been ignored by the Orthodox keepers of the Darwinist flame due to their content, and see what we may see:

Bill Cooper, who spent 25 years in compiling the evidence for his book, After The Flood, and has authored The Table Of Nations (Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal) and other reference materials, has compiled a wonderful treasure trove of information from ancient documents and I will be using them during the rest of the post. All quotes below, unless otherwise attributed, are taken from those two sources.

I had previously posted that Manetho had mentioned Peleg and the Tower of Babel in his writings concerning the history of Egypt, and indeed Egyptians did consider themselves the offspring ofCush, the son of Ham, the son of Noah.

"Josephus writes:

'...time has not at all hurt the name of Chus (i,e. Cush); for the Ethiopians over whom he reigned, are even at this day both by themselves and by all men in Asia, called Chusites'. "

Cooper notes that,"The name of Cush is preserved in Egypt's hieroglyphic inscriptions as Kush, the name referring to the country that lay between the second and third cataracts of the Nile. This same land was later known as Nubia. Additional confirmation of this location is given in an inscription of Esarhaddon of Assyria (681-668 BC), who tells us that he made himself king of 'Musur, Patorisi, and Cush. Some assert that the name of Cush was also perpetuated in that of the Babylonian city of Kish, ostensibly one of the earliest cities to be built after the Flood "

A numbered geneological table of descendants of Ham with each number corresponding to a paragraph of historical information is in the Table of Nations.

After the Tower of Babel, the descendants of Ham tended to move South and West, the descendants of Shem remained closer to their original homes and those of Japheth scattered to the East and North. It is my intent to focus on records of the descendants of Japheth, seeing as how both myself and my readers are most likely to have come (primarily) from that branch of the Noah tree.

JAPHETH

The name of Japheth as progenitor is found in many historical geneologies of peoples that have been passed down to us. For the Greeks, he was Iapetos. In Sanskrit (India) Pra-Japati (Father Japheth). The Romans called him Io-Pater or Jove and later of course, Jupiter. He was normally Japheth for Irish-Celtic and Viking lines but in the Saxon tongue it was Sceaf (!).

MIATSO PEOPLE OF CHINA

Edgar Truax translated the geneologies of this people, who had kept the geneologies for thousands of years before coming in contact with a Bible. Consider the line of progression:

Dirt (or "Adam" who was named after the red dirt from which he was formed) is the first man. Just as Genesis says that all other men were descended from Seth, the Miatso call him Se-teh. Other men between Adam and Noah (Nuah to the Miatso) are identifiable in the Genesis account. Unlike the Bible, Noah's wife is named (Gaw Bo-lu-en).

In Genesis, Noah's three sons are Ham, Shem and Japheth. In the Miatso account they are Lo Han, Lo Shen and Jah-phu. The Miatso are descended from Jah-phu. It is amazing that the same names are in the cultures so far apart in ways other than geographical. Amazing unless, of course, they are truly historical records.

"The records in which early Irish history is preserved have been masterfully set out and enumerated by Miss Cusack, authoress of The Illustrated History of Ireland, published in 1868 (and from which the above passage is taken). For her history, she drew upon an extensive number of manuscripts, many of which still survive, and are known under such evocative names as The Book of Leinster (written in 1130 AD, and copied from the much older Saltair of Cashel;) The Book of Ballymote (1390 AD;) and the Annals of the Four Masters. But two others received special mention, the Chronicum Scotorum, and the even more important (because earlier) Cin Droma Snechta.

The Cin Droma Snechta is now lost by all accounts, yet its contents were preserved by Keating, the Irish historian who wrote his own History from this and many other early manuscripts in about 1630. (See Bibliography.) The importance of the Cin Droma Snechta lies in the early date of its compilation, concerning which a note in the twelfth-century Book of Leinster tells us:

"Ernin, son of Duach, that is son of the King of Connacht....it was he that collected the Genealogies and Histories of the men of Erinn in one book, that is the Cin Droma Snechta." 3

The importance of this statement lies in the fact that Duach, Ernin's father, lived towards the end of the fourth century AD, which places the compilation of the Cin Droma Snechta well before the coming of Christianity to Ireland (and the oft-alleged forgeries of the Christian monks)!"

The Irish records include dates beginning with the creation of the world (Anno Mundi) and record the landing of the first colony on Ireland as 2520 AM. Irish geneologies begin with Noah, through Japheth, through Magog and some 24 generations later produce Riondal. There were several incursions from different groups in the Japheth line, including:

1) PARTHOLAN. The first person to colonize Ireland after the Flood, His people landed in Ireland in the year 1484 BC, Patholan died in 1454 BC, and the entire colony was wiped out by plague 300 years later in 1184 BC.

2)BAATH and JOBHATH. These two names also occur in the earliest portions of the British genealogy where JOBAATH is rendered IOBAATH. An intriguing thought is the possibility that these two names may betray the origins of the European royal blood. The very concept of royalty has long been a mystery, as has the reason why descendants of a certain family have always been set apart from and above the common herd. The royal families of Europe have always been interrelated to a greater or lesser degree throughout history and it seems very likely that the blood-royal began with Baath and Iobaath. The fact that here Baath and Jobaath are depicted as brothers, whereas in British genealogy, they are depicted as father and son, testifies to the distortion these records underwent in transmission. Their historicity, however, is convincingly demonstrated in their appearance in such diverse records as the Irish-Celtic and British.

3) EASRU and SRU. These two names, along with those of Baath and Iobaath, also occur in the earliest portions of the British genealogy where they are rendered IZRAU and EZRA, and again they appear to be the names of important founders of European royalty who lived before the division and dispersal of the various races and tribes of Europe.

4) HEBER and EREMON. The leaders of the Milesian settlement who landed in Ireland in the year 504 BC. From Heber, from whom Ireland derives its name Hibernia, are descended the great southern clans of Ireland, the McCarthy's and O'Brien's, and so-on, while from Eremon are descended the northern clans of O'Connor, O'Donnnell and O'Neill.

"The appearance of Magog's name in the Milesian ancestry is of great significance, for we saw in Part I of our study how Magog was the founder, or co-founder, of the Scythian peoples, and the early Irish chroniclers were emphatic in their claim that the Irish were descended from Scythian stock. This claim is confirmed in many points, not the least of which is the fact that "Scot" and "Scythian" share the same etymological root:

"Scot (is) the same as Sythian in etymology; the root of both is Sct. The Greeks had no c, and would change "t" into "th" making the root "skth," and by adding a phonetic vowel, we get Skuth-ai (Scythians,) and Skoth-ai (Skoths.) The Welsh disliked "s" at the beginning of a word, and would change it to "ys;" they would also change "c" or "k" to "g," and "th" to "d;" whence the Welsh root would be "Ysgd," and Skuth or Skoth would become "ysgod." Once more, the Saxons would cut off the Welsh "y," and change the "g" back again to "c," and the "d" to "t," converting the Ysgod to Scot." 10

The early Irish were originally known as Scots, of course, and they were later to leave Ireland and invade and settle the country that still bears their name, displacing and subduing the native Picts in waves and waves of invasion.

"The Books of Genealogies and Pedigrees form a most important element in Irish pagan history. For social and political reasons, the Irish Celt preserved his genealogical tree with scrupulous precision. Property rights and the governing power were transmitted with patriarchal exactitude on strict claims of primogeniture, which could only be refused under certain conditions defined by law...and in obedience to an ancient law, established long before the introduction of Christianity, all the provincial records, as well as those of the various chieftains, were required to be furnished every third year to the convocation at Tara, where they were compared and corrected."
____________________________________________________________________

BRITISH GENEOLOGIES

"We shall begin this section of our study by considering the work of a British scholar named Nennius. (The term British means he descended from the original peoples who settled in Britain after the Flood. The modern Welsh are descended from that same stock.) Nennius completed his famous work, the Historia Brittonum, towards the very end of the eighth century AD, and his achievement was to gather together, and thus preserve, a whole series of documents and sources that collectively shed much light specially upon the early pagan (i.e. pre-Christian) history of the early Britons. 16 In the preface to his work, he tells us (in Latin) that he is recording certain facts that the British had stupidly thrown away (quae hebitudo gentis Brittaniae deiecertat.)"

British geneologies also begin with Noah and Japheth but it is then that they are descended from Javan, although some intermarriage with the line of Magog is later not uncommon. Several generations later there is Alanus, from whom the Franks, Latins, Albans, British, Bavarians,Vandals,Saxons,Thuringians, Goths,Walagoths,Gepids,Burgundians and Langobards all trace descent.

The British Kings trace their descent from Noah down to the first ruler, Brutus. (He was the first to colonize the British mainland after the Flood, and was Britain's first king. The land of Britain and its people, the Britons, derived their name from him. His wife, Ignoge, the daughter of a "Greek" king named Pandrasus, was married to Brutus against her will.) The line goes unbroken from Brutus through some well-known kings such as Coel ("Old King Cole") and Utherpendragon and Arthur (later fictionalized as the Arthur of Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table) and Cadwallader (The son of Cadwallo, he succeeded his father as king. Bede knew him as Cliedvalla, and the Welsh knew him as Cadwaladr. He died in 689 AD.)

Yvor was the last king of pure British blood, taking the rather diminished throne in about 665 AD.

Interestingly, Bill Cooper was able to use five different sources to trace the lineage of the British from Japheth down to Brutus, sources that include Virgil, The Early History of Rome, Geoffrey Monmouth (discounted by modernists due to philosophical reasons primarily) and Nennius.

"One of the most remarkable things to be noticed about the Anglo-Saxon genealogies, is that so many have survived. Not only have they endured intact the ravages of some twelve or more centuries of war, worm, damp and decay; they have also survived the ravages of kings whose political interests once lay in the suppression of such records, namely the Vikings, Normans and Plantagenets."

The Geneologies of the Saxons, Danes, Icelanders and Norwegians all trace their lineage through Woden (Voden, Uuothen, Othin, or Uuoden) who was a descendant of Noa (Noe) and all lines include Fin (Finn). Various sources miss one name here and one there but by combining them the geneology is illustrated and preserved.

All six Saxon houses trace their lineage from Woden (who, like Japheth becoming Jupiter, was turned into a mythical Norse figure as Odin) and that includes the House of Kent.

"The Houses of Wessex (Occidentallium Saxonium;) of Lindsey (Lindis feama;) of Kent (Catwariorum;) of Mercia (Merciorum;) of Northumbria (Northa hymborum;) and of East Anglia (Estranglorum,) are all represented and all are seen to have traced their ancestry directly back to Woden and beyond. Fortunately, Woden's own ancestry is also shown in various sources, and this goes way back to Noah through Sceaf (of whom more shortly,) thus providing us with an invaluable and unbroken link with the immediate post-Flood era.

The political supremacy of these various Houses fluctuated almost from one decade to the next, and the particular king who at any one time held sway over the others, was accorded the title Bretwalda. The East Anglian king, Redwald, was a particularly famous Bretwalda and it is thought by many that it was his grave that was discovered during the excavations of the Sutton Hoo burial.

Redwald, however, as well as being an East Anglian king, also belonged to the famous clan of the Wuffingas. This name derived from his ancestor Wuffa, and it demonstrates the seriousness with which the early Saxons kept their genealogies. Undoubtedly, Wuffa would in time have been deified as an ancestor, as were other notable founders of clans before him, and it was only the presence of the early medieval Christian Church that prevented this happening in Wuffa's case. For example, Geat was not only the founder of the Geatingas (Beowulf of epic fame was a Geating,) but he became also one of the major gods or demi-gods of the Saxon pantheon."

There is more, yes, there is more. The curious reader can begin by clicking on some of the links provided. There will be another installment coming in the next days to continue the presentation of evidence for the geneological records in Genesis and their historical accuracy.

42 comments:

You may see the Bolded and underlined Ireland. Click on that for a start.

My heritage includes Scottish Kings (Malcolm, for instance) and the Stuarts and even King James!

My Irish side was farmers for all I can gather. The German side was nondescript and the other english branch undistinguished until reaching the States, at which point the Lees had some impact (signer of Declaration of Independence, General of the Confederate Armies).

All I know about my Cherokee side was my great great great (maybe even another great, I forget right now) grandmother who was apparently quite a fighter for a woman. For that matter, the Stuarts came into the family from my great grandmother who was red-haired and rumored to be darned saucy.

There is also some Norman heritage but nothing much known about them. Geneologies are fascinating, true! I suspect the thieves and blackguards and weasels also inhabit my family line but they were not often announced.

Oh yeah, the line I was from on the Scot side were actually kings of Ireland who invaded and took over a part of Scotland. One ancestor is Conaire mac Moga Lama, of all names, from around 140 to around 183 AD. Kings back then were, of course, really chieftains.The line goes on through Fedelmid Aislingich of Ireland (Dál Riata), or Angus Fert in around 400 AD. He was the first in Scotland rather than Ireland. That line goes through Alpin of Kintyre and eventually to Malcolm of Canmore, responsible for the death of MacBeth.

My son and I had a study done, to make sure we had the correct clan and so on. We could make a case for belonging to a few clans, including Ross and Donald and a couple of others. But we still owe $500.00 and they have not yet sent their preliminary findings so that we would send money. One side will blink eventually, I suppose.

"Darwinists fear the teaching of Intelligent Design even while loudly crying that it is "not science!""

Intelligent Design boils down to the arguments of irreducible complexity and specified complexity, which scientists do not fear, as you hypothesize, but have addressed calmly.

But why do you focus on ID - which does not challenge an old earth and common descent - when you champion something very different, namely young earth creationism?

"No, it is not their science because it doesn't fit into a materialist (some say naturalistic - To-may-toe, to-mah-toe) philosophy within which Darwinism must be encased."

A more accurate way to say that would be:"it is not science because it doesn't fit into a naturalistic framework within which science must be encased." I offer this because the naturalistic assumptions underlie all the natural sciences, not just what you call "Darwinism". The naturalistic framework has given us modern medicine, computers, transportation, you name it.

"Darwinism doesn't play so well when all possibilities are allowed to be considered and Darwinists furiously fight to remain the only players allowed on the field."

Any IDer or YEC is free to conduct any scientific experiment they please to test or make their case. They are free to falsify the theory of evolution if they so choose - and if it can be done. All this crying about alleged unfairness and wanting to put creationism into the science classroom before doing the necessary scientific legwork smacks of lack of confidence in the scientific validity of creationism.

"Later, when Darwinism came into bloom, there came the need to find long ages whenever possible."

The long ages, a.k.a. deep time, had already been "found" thanks to geological evidence. The Hutton Uncomformity, for example, is not easily explained by rapid deposition in a short time.

Regarding your focus on genealogy: Is it your aim to demonstrate that if the Bible is literally true in one aspect, then it must be literally true in all aspects? In that case you're engaging in both a strawman argument (disproving a claim that was never made that none of the Bible is literally true) and a Fallacy of Composition, that an attribute that applies to a part also applies to the whole.

In keeping with your logic: you had said that Manetho truthfully reported about Peleg and the Tower of Babel. Should we conclude that all of Manetho's writings are true?

"New textural criticisms of the Bible (the JPED Documentary Hypothesis in particular) arose, not from better information, but because there was a need to find long ages and discount all information that indicated otherwise."

From what I understand, the documentary hypothesis arose to explain inconsistencies in writing style and minor issues in content. I'm not sure how your "vast materialist conspiracy" notion is supposed to apply to Biblical scholars. It's just a hunch, but I'm guessing most of them are believing Christians, Jews etc., not some kind of atheist conspiracy.

The tablet theory is interesting, but doesn't really tell us much about the veracity of earlier parts of Genesis. As the article from True Origins itself mentions: "Enough archaeological confirmation has been found so that many historians now consider the Old Testament, at least that part after about the eleventh chapter of Genesis, to be historically correct."

About the descendants of Ham - how quickly did they evolve into the races we see today in Africa and Asia?

"An intriguing thought is the possibility that these two names [Baath and Jobaath] may betray the origins of the European royal blood. The very concept of royalty has long been a mystery, as has the reason why descendants of a certain family have always been set apart from and above the common herd. The royal families of Europe have always been interrelated to a greater or lesser degree throughout history and it seems very likely that the blood-royal began with Baath and Iobaath."

I understand this was your writing, not a quote. I'm not sure what you're hypothesizing here - where do you think the European royal blood came from, that set them "apart from and above the common herd"? (You make a similar allusion in the next paragraph, about Easru and Sru.)

[tries again:]Oh my. Just as radar isn't familiar with much of modern biology, I'm not familiar with much of modern creationism. I never realized it partook of this sort of adlepated amateur antiquarianism. I'm more used to seeing it go bad when appropriated by violent nationalism, or carried to absurd lengths by one or another kooky idea, like . . . oh. Ah.

A few points (I know, I know, I suffer from bloghorrea . . .)

" Darwinism and Uniformitarianism . . .washed back through the place they had begun, Philosophy."

This is part of a persistent theme in your last few posts. It is incorrect. Neither evolutionary theory nor uniformitarianism sprung from philosophy per se, but from observations of the world. That is why the Darwin we talk about is Charles, not Erasmus, whose evolutionary musings were the stuff of philosophy rather than modern science.

"It . . . has done lasting damage"Yes. Creative destruction is still destruction. Modern civilization is built on ruins, often literally (ie, Rome, Mexico City, etc., etc., etc.). You would tear down the houses and homes of so many people, rip up parks, businesses, highways, in order to reconstruct what lies beneath?

"materialist (some say naturalistic - To-may-toe, to-mah-toe) philosophy."There are real denotative and connotative differences here, actually. To me, on the lowest level, materialism refers more to substance while naturalism refers more to process - often, specifically, to investigatory strategies - but that's just me. More to the point, 'materialism' has so many layers of emotionally reactive meanings that it's perhaps not the best choice for a reasoned discussion of controversial issues, unless one is trying to tilt the field.I haven't been that great with the terms either. And I meant to be saying metaphysical naturalism, rather than philosophical - more specific, and the alliterative parallelism is better. I never pay attenton to what I write . . .

" Darwinism doesn't play so well when all possibilities are allowed to be considered and Darwinists furiously fight to remain the only players allowed on the field. That way, they always win!"

It is besides the point here to mention that this has often applied to religion (that's why minority denominations are so often in favor of 1st amendment protections);anyway, it scores an own-goal, given the anti-science team's efforts to paint science as just another religion. So:It's a turf war. (replace turf with magisterium if you really want). Yeah, you guys used to own our turf. You couldn't hold it. You lost it, (because we're better at it (explaining how the natural world works) than you are). Get over it. Cut the cussin' and the crying, the wailing and the whining, the whole romantic-revolutionaries-in exile crap. Deal. Admit it, deep down you've gotten used to the situation. You're dependent on it: the cross-border trade, the economic opportunities, the rise in your standard of living . . .

But you have a point. When you let supernatural explanations onto the field, and practical results are not an issue, the supernatural will win every time, because it better satisfies human needs and habits of thought.

Of course, when practical results are an issue, you end up with a) science winning, or b) a whole bunch more dead kids, and sometimes some burnt-up old ladies. Now, if you think that our life here is just the opening act to a glorious (or horrific) show, one might be tempted to accept this. Granted, it's maybe a bit clearer if you think that our one life on this beautiful earth is all we get- but really, most of the folks who don't think this still ignore that temptation, and work to improve things in the here and now.

". New textural criticisms of the Bible . . . arose, not from better information, but because there was a need to find long ages and discount all information that indicated otherwise."

Like the similar criticism of science: it's not all about you. Creationism's like some girl convinced that he's just flirting with that other girl to make her jealous, when really, he doesn't care about her. She's irrelevent to him. Harsh, hurtful, yes, but sometimes one needs a good friend to say it's time to get over it and move on. . .

{maybe I should stick to the boy analogies}.

Hey, we're working. We're building. We have stuff to do. You can help. You don't have to, of course, but if not - if you want to work on your projects instead - it would be nice if you could perhaps stay out of the way, and stop trying to monkeywrench our stuff (which you are, radar, probably, but many of your fellows aren't).

"It is amazing that the same names are in the cultures so far apart in ways other than geographical. Amazing unless, of course, they are truly historical records."

Especially when none of them had any contact - direct or through intermediaries - until nearly up the moment that these amazing similarities were recorded. Oh, wait, That's not what happened? Well, then, that muddies the waters a bit . . .

Without saying that religion is just a folk or fairy tale - consider: you can find what are identifiable as certain stories - for example, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood - or archetypes -for example, the trickster - in cultures very far apart both geographically and otherwise. How can this be?

In a related but slightly different vein -I'm fascinated by oral history and tradition. I think it often has the potential to be a valuable source for understanding the past (yahoo headline today: Trojan War hero's palace claimed to be found - but even its most outspoken academic supporters now admit that it needs very careful, critical examination, as one line of evidence. Things change. Historical characters, especially, tend to become coathangers for all sorts of (sometimes contradictory) stories Oral history is different from written history - in a way, it's truer to human needs, changing to match to contemporary needs, preoccupations, uses, etc. Of course, written history will do that too - not just interpretation, but look at the way, say, American history gets mythologized, reshaped to fit competing political/cultural agendas, sanitized, etc. (it's an issue in - among many other places and areas - living history museums, like Colonial Williamsburg, etc. - and don't forget the great 1990s History Standards War. Lynne Cheney has a lot to answer for . . .

Imagine if sources for early American history was primarily oral - although perhaps versions were collected and written down at some point, with later additions by White House scribes/official historians. Can you imagine what, say, accounts of colonial and revolutionary times would be like?

No one disagrees that at least parts of the Bible are historica accounts. Modern mainstream scholarship regards it as a source -even an important one? - for ancient Middle Eastern history - but it's a lens to be peered through, not a precise rendering.

Even if one believes some of it is of divine inspiration, people were involved, and when you have people involved, things will get messed up. It's virtually a law. After all, it's hard not to read a lot of the Bible and come away with the image of God as a weary parent dealing with a world of bewildering, hyperactive, frequently misbehaving little kids.

"Some of the cultures that have an historical Noah include . .. "I was trying to find more information - instead I found this:""..On November 17, 3398 B.C., two billion people, with their astonishing technology, vanished from the face of the earth. This lost super race beat us to the moon(?), to computers, and to nuclear war. A cosmic disaster occurred which wiped out a super civilization and generated 6,000 foot tidal waves the disaster known to early civilizations worldwide as the great flood (the deluge mentioned in the book of Genesis in the Bible, for which Noah constructed the Ark to save a remnant of mankind). :...The descendants of this super race branched out from Ararat (Armenia) to create civilizations less advanced technologically, but still with some knowledge of their original civilization. The theory of evolution, which believes in the gradual progression of man, cannot stand up to the evidence governed by the laws of thermo-dynamics. The evidence of fully developed cities and an advanced technology of a superior man, whose society deteriorated over time is irrefutable.""

although the person quoting this silliness states that they may not agree completely with all the conclusions in the quoted work. Woo-hoo.(This being, as you point out, where you got the information from.)

Nu-Wah: so far I haven't found any reference to him that isn't a ~creationist site, mostly repeating the work above. (also: something from 'Shia News'.

Noa (Amazon) - can't find anything yet.

Noe (Phrygia = an ancient kingdom/region in what is now Turkey) . . . According to the American Israel Numismatic Association,"These famous 'Noah' coins [Noah given in Greek as 'Noe'] were issued m the city of Apameia, Phrygia, in the 3rd century AD, when the city was under Roman rule, and some of them were struck by city officials who were Jewish. The Noah coin design must have been very popular because it was struck for the emperors Septimius Severus, AD 192-211, Severus Alexander, 222-235, Gordian m, 238-244, Philip 1, 244-249, and Trebonianus Callus, 251-253, over a period of 61 years. The same coin may have been struck for other emperors such as Caracalla, the son of Septimius Severus, but these have not been discovered to date. Apameia, now the town of Dinar in western Turkey, was a prosperous city during Roman times. It was a trade terminal and commercial center that received the caravans from the east and south loaded with silks, spices, incense, perfumes medicines and gold. The population of the city was a cosmopolitan mix of Phrygians, Lydians, Cappadocians, Pisidians, Greeks, Jews and Romans, all involved in trade and commerce."

1) 'Hottentot' is now considered an offensive term, being the white colonial word for the Khoikhoi or Khoi people.2) I can't find anything about these characters except the same creationist references.

There is quite a large collection of flood myths at the Flood Stories from Around the World page on Talk Origins - no creation vs. evolution commentary, just account after account. (There's an account from Mexico that talks about the Angel Gabriel, Noeh, and the Ark! Amazing! How could this be?!)Also some exceedingly odd and definitely different flood stories. Fascinating reading. Seriously.a) There are a lot of flood stories in world mythology.b) some of these were clearly borrowed from other cultures (but possibly melded with pre-existing flood-ish stories.)c) along with cross-cultural contact, it seems possible that groups of different flood stories represent 'flood story families' - like language families - that descend from an earlier proto-flood myth (though borrowings, etc. may make it impossible to figure out what happened, since myths don't seem to follow the same kind of regular rules as language). The number of these flood story families is unclear. It may not even be impossible for the various families to all go back to one very, very old proto-proto myth (but we have no evidence for this. Can story elements survive and be passed down, in different places, for ~ over a hundred centuries? It's a fascinating idea, but it's really just cloud-castle building at this point - we don't have anything solid to go from.)d) Some of these flood stories may well refer to on or more historical local floods (for example, the Black Sea Flood hypothesis). At the same time, the idea of an destructive flood may be akin to the way religion, mythology and folklore around the world are influenced by the local fauna, flora, geography, etc - in that people are drawing on elements of the local real world. Floods are pretty destructive. Even if some of these stories didn't grow, pearl-like, about a specific long ago event when some community was flooded out and the villagers escaped with only their lives and a few chickens by running to higher ground, the idea of flood is a powerful one.

Also, while the hat tip was good, you perhaps should have used quotes?

""Josephus writes:

'...time has not at all hurt the name of Chus (i,e. Cush); for the Ethiopians over whom he reigned, are even at this day both by themselves and by all men in Asia, called Chusites'. " "- refering, apparently, to the old country of Kush, south of Egypt.

This sounds like folk entymology to me. Read T.H. White's "The Book of Beasts" - a ~translation of an medieval bestiary - there are some great examples of this sort of thing there . . .

" For the Greeks, he was Iapetos. In Sanskrit (India) Pra-Japati (Father Japheth). The Romans called him Io-Pater or Jove and later of course, Jupiter. He was normally Japheth for Irish-Celtic and Viking lines but in the Saxon tongue it was Sceaf (!)"

This is a linguistic question. Are these names actually cognates? I don't think this is generally accepted (although your more northerly examples probably are borrowings), but I don't know for certain. Will check.

"An intriguing thought is the possibility that these two names may betray the origins of the European royal blood. "

Radar: "An intriguing thought is the possibility that these two names may betray the origins of the European royal blood. "

Dan: "Oh boy. Now we've really in la-la land. Bye-bye."

Now now... I think Radar may be on to something here, and I'd really like him to elaborate on this.

Radar, would you be so kind? I'm very curious to learn your reasoning about the royal blood line.

Oh and as an aside: "But we still owe $500.00 and they have not yet sent their preliminary findings so that we would send money. One side will blink eventually, I suppose."

Radar, I'm afraid it's virtually unheard of that the people who are owed 500 bucks blink in such a scenario... but it sounds like fascinating stuff all right - you should consider paying them.

You're right about the Irish kings being more like chieftains, and some towns and cities would have more than one. For example Galway, on the west coast of Ireland, had 14 of them. It was like being head of a clan.

since you seem to think that everyone who doesn't buy into YEC is a materialist with ulterior motives, who secretly seeks to suppress the truth of YEC coming out, I thought I would direct you to this site:

"Welcome to Answers In Creation, a creation science ministry believing in an inerrant Word of God and a literal interpretation of Genesis. We also believe the earth is billions of years old. We apply logic and common sense to creation science, and bring conservative Christianity and Old Earth Creationism together, without conflict.

Are you new to Old Earth Creationism? Click Here for a brief explanation. Don't think you can be a Christian and believe in an old earth? Click here to see!"

It's not just ghastly godless hedonists looking for a way out of being held accountable by their maker - oh no, even devout Christians are capable of looking at the evidence and drawing their conclusions with an open mind.

YEC, Old Earth creationism, Darwinism, lots of ideas out there. All three of the above should be considered. Darwinists try to keep #1 and #2 out of the discussion but that is unreasonable considering the vast amount of evidence to keep all three somewhat viable. I don't tell OEC that they are crazy and I wouldn't gripe at Darwinists if they weren't trying to hog the entire field. You guys are the ones who want to be exclusive here. But of course I am going to present the evidence I believe is correct.

An open mind, to some, means that you agree with them. I have come to where I stand now with an open mind and intend to always be willing to be teachable. My experience is that there are a lot of Darwinists who are far more dogmatic than I.

Really it wouldn't make a big deal to me if we discovered our Scots roots were those of brigands and ne're-do-wells. You are what you do more than what your long deceased ancestors did. I find it interesting, that is all. As to the idea of royal lines, that is simply a shot at understanding why the people of those times made such a big deal of it. Looks like it may have had a basis in fact. Frankly, the performance of the current Royals in England today gives no indication that being "born to rule" is beneficial.

Genealogy! Good grief. I can usually spell and never use spell check. Serves me right!

I will post about Philosophy and motives so that I am not misunderstood.

The $500.00? It is an Irish company and I suppose that explains that! (I can say it because I have Irish blood through my maternal Grandfather.)

There's a difference between something "being considered" (which YEC is far more than its demonstrated scientific validity should warrant) and being taught as science. Like I said in an earlier comment, we don't just throw any old junk into a classroom and let the kids sort it out. In the lab or the field we figure out the best possible scientific explanations via the scientific method, and in the classroom we teach the best possible scientific explanations. Young earth creationists want special treatment so they can skip the scientific groundwork, which from the looks of it is proving exceedingly difficult for them.

Whoever these "Darwinists" are, they are not stopping you from discussing your beliefs, nor are they stopping anyone from scientifically exploring their notions. But creationism can't just claim special status and demand to be taught as science when it falls so short on that front.

I can't think of a single pro-YEC claim that wasn't thoroughly refuted and (here comes the important part, Radar:) subsequently defended (i.e. the rebuttal successfully addressed).

On more than one occasion you have repeated an argument while ignoring how it had been rebutted, which tells me that either you shy away from acknowledging the rebuttal or you're not terribly interested in furthering your knowledge of the subject and aim only to make noise with the hope that some of it will stick somewhere, regardless of whether it is true. I certainly hope it is the former, and I encourage you to delve into the questions that several of us have posted here. If your stance is supported by the evidence, as you have said so often you strongly believe, then the evidence will be completely on your side, and you will be able to address all rebuttals with ease.

Quite a few questions have been raised about YEC on this blog in recent weeks; we're waiting for someone to address them.

"An open mind, to some, means that you agree with them."

I'd believe you were open-minded if you addressed the questions put to you, regardless of where they lead. As long as you ignore them and repeat the same talking points, I have my doubts.

"My experience is that there are a lot of Darwinists who are far more dogmatic than I."

I submit that you seriously underestimate your own dogmatism. We have patiently and at great length responded to your claims, but have received evasions on many questions in return. When you see two parties arguing, of which one answers the other party's questions in detail while the other avoids answers and repeats rebutted arguments, which side would you say is more dogmatic?

"Really it wouldn't make a big deal to me if we discovered our Scots roots were those of brigands and ne're-do-wells."

Explaining that stuff about the kings/chieftains wasn't intended as a put-down. It's just an interesting sidenote.

"You are what you do more than what your long deceased ancestors did."

Well, yes, though there are ancestral religions as well, which are kind of interesting in their own right.

"I find it interesting, that is all."

Me too, though I haven't delved into my family's genealogy in great detail.

"As to the idea of royal lines, that is simply a shot at understanding why the people of those times made such a big deal of it."

Well that's the part I didn't quite understand from what you were saying in the post: why did the people make a big deal of it and, more interestingly, what is it, you think, that set one line apart from and above the rest?

"Looks like it may have had a basis in fact. Frankly, the performance of the current Royals in England today gives no indication that being "born to rule" is beneficial."

Let's go easy on them - centuries of inbreeding can have negative side-effects.

"Genealogy! Good grief. I can usually spell and never use spell check. Serves me right!"

It's mildly counter-intuitive, isn't it? Go figure.

"I will post about Philosophy and motives so that I am not misunderstood."

Post about what you like, but I'm really quite curious about these flood-related posts you've been promising. The genealogy stuff is interesting, but doesn't really do much to support the notion of the flood itself, which is fraught with other problems.

Posts about philosophy and motives in this context of creation/evolution tend to point to this tiresome alleged conspiracy of materialists who are out to getcha. The existence of Christians who can publicly reconcile falsifies this anyway.

Besides, you already made the point about philosophy and motives not so long ago, and there are some exciting topics re. the flood still to cover.

You did raise the subject of Ham, who I suppose is intended to be the ancestor of Asians and Africans in this scenario. So how quickly did those different races evolve? Are there genealogies that trace back the different races on those continents to Noah as well? And at which point in this genealogy did they morph from Noah's race into Africans and Asians?

What mechanism would allow Noah's descendants to evolve into the different races at such amazing speed?

The $500.00? It is an Irish company and I suppose that explains that!"

What does it explain? That it's too expensive? Or that you don't want to pay them?

Hutton unconformity? That is now being used as an example by neo-catastrophists and yet another example of how wrong the long-age uniformitarians really were. It hardly is a good argument for Darwinists, that.

"Intelligent Design boils down to the arguments of irreducible complexity and specified complexity, which scientists do not fear, as you hypothesize, but have addressed calmly."

Right, which is why they fight tooth and nail to keep ID out of classrooms. Maybe calmly, as in, lets be real quiet now and hope everyone will forget all about irreducible complexity so we can go back to tormenting a few more hundred generations of fruit flies.

"The naturalistic framework has given us modern medicine, computers, transportation, you name it."

Baloney. Naturalism gets no credit. You think Pasteur had to work at keeping thoughts of God away from his mind as he did his research? Naturalism is an exclusive, rather than inclusive, way of thinking and thus narrows the field of possibilities and therefore, as I said previously, makes for a poorer science.

"Any IDer or YEC is free to conduct any scientific experiment they please to test or make their case."

Experiments in this field almost always conclude with results that a creationist would expect, while the disappointed Darwinist looks for another experiment. You guys just have a better marketing department. But I am working on that.

Let me be clear. The Bible is true in its entirety. Some of it is in symbolic language and those places are easily understood.

"From what I understand, the documentary hypothesis arose to explain inconsistencies in writing style and minor issues in content."

Nope. There were no issues in this regard. The hypothesis was proposed centuries after the book of Genesis had been continually endorsed by scholars based primarily on the multiple names used for God. This was no controversy heretofore, but the humanist agenda demands that the Bible be proven to be a collection of mythical tales.

"In keeping with your logic: you had said that Manetho truthfully reported about Peleg and the Tower of Babel. Should we conclude that all of Manetho's writings are true?"

No, I am saying that since it was a Darwinist who brought the subject of Manetho up, I wanted to point out that Manetho mentions Peleg and the Tower of Babel and established that Egypt was begun after both the Flood and Babel. So if you want Manetho, you also get Genesis.

"Just as radar isn't familiar with much of modern biology, I'm not familiar with much of modern creationism. I never realized it partook of this sort of adlepated amateur antiquarianism. I'm more used to seeing it go bad when appropriated by violent nationalism, or carried to absurd lengths by one or another kooky idea, like . . . oh. Ah."

Yeah, right. Diss me, big guy, but since I am largely using the work of Bill Cooper, a renowned Archaelogist, you are a bit like a brash teen challenging Chuck Norris to a fight.

"Neither evolutionary theory nor uniformitarianism sprung from philosophy per se, but from observations of the world."

Actually, Darwin was a student of theology who fell away from his earlier beliefs after his sister took ill. The captain of the HMS Beagle recounts Darwin's state of mind during the voyage and it appears that a morose Darwin was, indeed, motivated much by philosophy in his writings.

As to Hutton, George Fairholme, a geologist of note of the same times weighs in... "Fairholme displayed a very respectful attitude. One could accuse him of being boring in the use of adjectives, because his most frequent descriptions were ‘able’ or ‘learned’, which he used equally with regard to deistic uniformitarians, such as Lyell, Playfair and Hutton, and to Christian catastrophists, such as Buckland and Sedgwick. After quoting James Hutton’s famous statement that he found ‘no traces of a beginning, no prospect of an end’, which had provoked the angry charge of atheism from many others, Fairholme refrained from character assassination and simply, but firmly, criticized his conclusions by saying,

‘But Hutton, intent only on proving the vast antiquity of the earth, carried his sweeping conclusions far beyond the limits prescribed by his premises; and was thus amongst the first to mislead the scientific world into that tangled labyrinth, which most men now perceive, and which some regard without much hope of ultimate extrication.’"

In short, Fairholme believed that Hutton and others were motivated to find what they found before they found it. See?

As to the genealogies (hey, I spelled it right) that I presented, they stand on their merits as history unrelated to "little red riding hood" or, for that matter, "primeval soup", hee hee! Or as the blogger bot declares, "yxqctkkj!"

Creeper, on many subjects I have rebutted your rebuttals, pointed to a site that specifically rebuts talkorigins, and as it happens we disagree. I cannot further rebut the statistical question but simply to say that Dembski is on my side and I am satisfied with that.

I often rebut comments in my posts. Go ahead and name your top two "unrebutted" claims so I can be sure to rebut them.

I am using the genealogies as a set-up to the flood and since I like to think logically, I want to finish the basic genealogy thread first. But I have only one more main posting on the subject to go, and the next one begins the flood, so your patience will not be long tried.

Oh, and the justification for royals thing was proposed as a question by Bill Cooper. It was the idea that the direct line from the guys who set up fiefdoms should continue to rule down through the generations and it was genealogical records that gave such rulers their "right" to reign.

me: "The naturalistic framework has given us modern medicine, computers, transportation, you name it."

you: "Baloney. Naturalism gets no credit. You think Pasteur had to work at keeping thoughts of God away from his mind as he did his research?"

No, he didn't have to keep thoughts of God away from his mind - but he did have to keep God as an explanation out of his work. I've explained this distinction to you before. A scientist may hold whatever worldview he likes, but in his scientific work he must maintain a naturalistic approach.

"Naturalism is an exclusive, rather than inclusive, way of thinking and thus narrows the field of possibilities and therefore, as I said previously, makes for a poorer science."

Naturalism, in science, is a specific and effective way of thinking.

Name an example in which invoking a supernatural explanation led to a scientific insight or breakthrough. Name an invention that was made possible by invoking a supernatural explanation.

"Hutton unconformity? That is now being used as an example by neo-catastrophists and yet another example of how wrong the long-age uniformitarians really were. It hardly is a good argument for Darwinists, that."

How does the Hutton uncomformity show that an old earth is less likely than a young earth? How do YECs even plausibly explain the Hutton uncomformity?

"Experiments in this field almost always conclude with results that a creationist would expect, while the disappointed Darwinist looks for another experiment."

Could you name some falsifiable creationist predictions, and the experiments or observations that confirmed them? Could you name some experiments or observations that falsified the theory of evolution?

"You guys just have a better marketing department. But I am working on that."

The fact that scientific research confirms the theory of evolution on an ongoing basis makes a marketing department redundant. "Creation science", on the other hand, consists of mostly marketing and very little actual research. It's a natural consequence of not being able to make testable claims.

"As to the genealogies (hey, I spelled it right) that I presented, they stand on their merits as history unrelated to "little red riding hood" or, for that matter, "primeval soup", hee hee!"

As the article you linked to regarding the tablet theory made quite clear, they show what they show: "Enough archaeological confirmation has been found so that many historians now consider the Old Testament, at least that part after about the eleventh chapter of Genesis, to be historically correct." They tell us nothing significant about the veracity of the Flood account or anything preceding it.

"I wanted to point out that Manetho mentions Peleg and the Tower of Babel and established that Egypt was begun after both the Flood and Babel. So if you want Manetho, you also get Genesis."

And that right there is the Fallacy of Composition in action, Radar. Manetho (and other sources) confirming some aspects of Genesis does not make all of Genesis true. Even the folks over at True Origins realize that much.

Creeper said pretty much everything I would have, and more - and shorter and sweeter, too - so just let me note that of my whole ridiculously long comment, you only adresses two points:

1) "Diss me, big guy" - which is perhaps little unfair. Sure, I said you weren't familiar with modern biology, but I immediately added that I wasn't familiar with modern creationism. Everyone has holes in their knowledge, and it honestly seems to me that you're not that familiar with modern biology. (Perhaps I should have added the "that"? or added "but only a little less so than me"?) Man, if you're going to be so sensitive, I'll take my ball and go play with DaveScot or somebody instead : )Unless it was the 'adlepated amateur antiquarianism' comment, a trait which I carefully attributed to creationism rather than radar - a nicety that perhaps counts for less than I think, I guess . . .

"but since I am largely using the work of Bill Cooper, a renowned Archaelogist"

I got lucky here! If you had said 'a brilliant archaeologist' all I could do is admit that I never heard of him and had to go to the internet for information,probably without being able to specifically refute your claim. But renowned!? Look - one of the comments a bit back has a link to a list of archaeology/anthropology departments. Go call 'em up and ask them about Bill Cooper. Well, don't, if you don't want to - I'll tell you what they'll say. Almost everyone is going to go 'who?!', just maybe someone from Arizona might confuse him with the UFO crackpot shortwave radio talk-show host who was killed in a shootout with law enforcement officials, and possibly, barely possibly, someone who spends a lot of time debunking pseudoscience might go "wh . . oh! That guy! The one who goes on about records, and talks about sites of dinosaur activity in Britain, based on 'first hand' accounts ]chuckle[ . . ."

Perhaps you mean 'renowned in the creationist community' - AIG distributes his book, that must count for something. I've gotta say, he doesn't seem all that famous even there, but like I pointed out, I'm not familiar with modern creationism.

2) "Actually, Darwin was a student of theology who fell away from his earlier beliefs after his sister took ill."

Do you have a reference for this? I've not heard this before, though I'm no Darwin expert. Certainly it's well-known that the death of his daughter in 1851 destroyed any faith he had in a good, loving God - a response I'm sure you as a parent could understand, if even to explain it as the foolish mistake of a grief-striken man. It's frequently said that his observations during his trip aboard the Beagle made him question contemporary natural theology, which he had been quite convinced by, and that by the end of the voyage he had additionally come to believe that at least some? of the Bible (mainly the old testament, it sounds?) was mainly allegorical. And apparently he was seasick a lot.

If anything, this sounds like part of a good cautionary tale for those who wish to replace religious faith with scientific 'proofs' of religion. Rev. Paley's version of the argument from design was, after all, the grandfather of modern ID creationism.

[Fairholme on Hutton]I'm not a geologist or a historian of geology, but it sounds as if Fairholme perhaps isn't necessarily proving your point (Hutton set out to prove an a priori philosophical belief) so much as saying that Hutton was so excited and eager to conclusively prove the idea he came up with, (reasonably) based on observations, that he went overboard. Although maybe I'm over-reading it . ..

And strictly speaking, Hutton's statement: "I can find no traces of a beginning, no prospect of an end," given the technology and scientific knowledge available at the time, would seem to be correct! The evidence that the earth's geological history - to say nothing of the universe itself! - had a beginning (and the chilling prospect of an end) lay far in the future, to be uncovered using tools the gentleman farmer from Edinburgh couldn't have imagined. I don't know how hard he pushed the idea that this inability to find such things was conclusive evidence, rather than at best a suggestive hypothesis - that would be going well beyond what was warrented . . .

Anyway, the whole motivation thing, strictly speaking, is irrelevent - what matters is whether the science works, whether the data is correct, etc. (although it's helpful as a rule of thumb in those cases where we have no hope of usefully evaluating this). If some guy set off on an ark-finding expedition in order to prove Genesis literally correct, and actually found the buried remains of a emormous boat, with mummified droppings and other traces identified as belonging to a extremely wide range of animals, with the whole thing convincingly dated to a few thousand years ago . . . . well, let's just say I would have a lot of thinking to do.

(The folks who go off on such expeditions - I'm always torn between a kind of pitying respect for them and the urge to shake them and ask why they're wasting the brains they presumably believe God gave them - but of course, it doesn't seem that way to them, so . . .)

Now, when it comes to setting what's being taught to early adolescents in public school - here motive becomes genuinely important, both practically and legally . . .

Too much to do - I'll come back to comment about why so many people don't want ID creationism taught to ~14 year olds in public school - at least yet. But why do you spread the mantle of literalism to include, apparently, any written records, including accounts of ancient history by people for whom literacy is introduced with Christianity centuries and centuries later?

And perhaps you could address some of my other points - at least if you can find them under the verbiage and oddball analogies and general blather?

"a bit like a brash teen challenging Chuck Norris to a fight."

Actually, that's a pretty good analogy for creationism. Which isn't to say that sometimes there are surprising upsets, but perhaps a long time spend doing apparently unrelated household chores for a genial elderly Japanese would help.Or something. I think I got a bit lost there . . .

"I wanted to point out that Manetho mentions Peleg and the Tower of Babel and established that Egypt was begun after both the Flood and Babel."

Radar, where and how does Manetho establish that Egypt was begun after both the Flood and Babel?

Dan asked you about this before, and you didn't respond.

Also, I asked you this before, and likewise didn't get a reply:

"Where do the Egyptian records indicate a global flood that wiped out all Egyptians? If there is, neither you nor the sources you presented here made a mention of it."

And while we're rummaging around in this general topic, there's also this:

"There was one mention of Constantinus Manasses saying that the Egyptian state lasted 1663 years, though what this number is based on is left unclear, and whether this would allow the number to be plugged into any scenario willy nilly. Nor is it clear how this would account for the Palermo stone."

Before you start bleating on about how it mocks your faith, I ask you to consider this: In science, there is no greater honour than to have your work examined to the finest detail, and critiqued with an eye to showing you where your assumptions are faulty or your hypotheses untenable. This is what the author does with the Ark story, and in doing so, he shows the story, and the hypotheses that it necessitates, immense respect.

Please rememeber that I am not asking anyone to give up their faith, only to admit that their faith is not scientifically supported. Since you've already said that having the Bible disproven would not stop you from believing, this shouldn't be a problem.

Dan -"It is amazing that the same names are in the cultures so far apart in ways other than geographical. Amazing unless, of course, they are truly historical records."

Especially when none of them had any contact - direct or through intermediaries - until nearly up the moment that these amazing similarities were recorded.Oh, wait, That's not what happened? Well, then, that muddies the waters a bit . . .

Huh? The genealogies I mentioned were from records from before anyone with Genesis knowledge happened by. So it is either a matter of unbelievable coincidences or history being verified. That such records were so well kept is indicative of how important they were to those peoples who kept them. Did you ever think that if you had to go back 25 generations you would have a family tree of 33,554,432 ancestors?

Jake- "I'd be interested to know what you YECs make of this.

Before you start bleating on about how it mocks your faith, I ask you to consider this: In science, there is no greater honour than to have your work examined to the finest detail, and critiqued with an eye to showing you where your assumptions are faulty or your hypotheses untenable. This is what the author does with the Ark story, and in doing so, he shows the story, and the hypotheses that it necessitates, immense respect."

Not worried about my faith being mocked, but if you read my posting about the ark and animals you would not be so excited to show me this link. The author makes all sorts of suppositions and displays a great deal of ignorance about what the Bible says concerning the creatures of the Ark. The author also presumes that the antediluvians were primitive peoples. Beyond that, where Noah built the boat according to the design given him by God, the author wonders how Noah ever figured out such a wondrous craft. And on and on....it is interesting but were I to devote a whole post on it I would have to spend several paragraphs merely explaining the ignorant (of the Bible and the Flood account) mistakes made in its presuppositions and therefore the conclusions reached as well. Then there is the matter of God, who the author thinks is rather limited in what He can do should He make up His mind to do it. I am not of the same opinion, however.

Cranky/Creeper "Creeper: "Intelligent Design boils down to the arguments of irreducible complexity and specified complexity, which scientists do not fear, as you hypothesize, but have addressed calmly."

Radar: "Right, which is why they fight tooth and nail to keep ID out of classrooms"

What is it with IDer's obsession for having 8th graders validate their arguments?

Relying on a child's review rather than peer review of ID "science" is, well, childish."

I did post something about this....it happens to be true that Darwinists do mock the efforts of creationists and ID proponents and work hard to keep their views out of the discussion of origins altogether. The Institute for Creation Research, for instance, was put down by Darwinists upon being mentioned. Why? Not for their credentials, but because of their scientific stance. It is what we call prejudice and Darwinists are guilty as charged.

As to Bill Cooper and "first hand accounts of Dinosaur activity." Just wait. I am going to devote an entire post to that subject, thank you very much!

Hutton Unconformity, part 2. Since geologists see the Hutton Unconformity as being the result of catastrophic rather than uniformitarian processes, I wonder why I should be concerned about it?

PS - I got a nice letter from a company that does DNA testing to determine whether one has Malcolm Canholme as an ancestor. They can nail down some of my questions so I may well take them up on it. It was a fellow by the name of Bill Robertson who mentioned how many ancestors I would have by going back 25 generations, by the way, and because Malcolm may be as many as 30 back it is very likely that anyone of Scots descent is related to him in some way....well, maybe.

First of all, the grades in which evolution is taught go up to the 12th grade in public schools, not 8th. Second, no one is asking 8th graders to debate this issue.

Here is what happens. Adult parents, educators and administrators decide to teach both the evolutionary and ID and/or creation possibilities. Then, high-powered evolutionist lawyers file suit and it becomes a court case, where the evolutionists hope that a liberal/lefty judge will rule in their favor and stifle the non-evolution side of the issue. This keeps the kids in schools captive to the Darwinist point of view while in classrooms.

"First of all, the grades in which evolution is taught go up to the 12th grade in public schools, not 8th."

Okay, I'll rephrase it, even if it doesn't change the essence of the question: Why dodge the discussion among intellectual peers and choose to have it out among up-to-12th graders instead?

"Second, no one is asking 8th graders to debate this issue."

In every other area of every other field of science, scientific study comes first; but in this case Christians want to plead for an exception. Again: win the science, and the classroom is yours automatically. Skipping the science in light of this is a very telling indicator that there is lacking confidence in "creation science".

"Here is what happens. Adult parents, educators and administrators decide to teach both the evolutionary and ID and/or creation possibilities."

Creation can be taught in Sunday school until the cows come home - nobody will stop Christians from doing that. Bringing it into science class in public school is a different matter, but it's not an infringement of your desire to indoctrinate your kids any way you see fit.

"Then, high-powered evolutionist lawyers file suit and it becomes a court case, where the evolutionists hope that a liberal/lefty judge will rule in their favor and stifle the non-evolution side of the issue."

In Dover it was parents of students who sued.

How do you know what evolutionists hope? Besides, it doesn't take a "liberal/lefty judge" to rule against the teaching of ID, does it? Judge Jones made that very clear. It's down to the merits of the case.

And why do you always lump ID and young earth creationism together? Just so YECs can take credit for any advances that ID (which does not challenge an old earth or common descent) has made?

"This keeps the kids in schools captive to the Darwinist point of view while in classrooms."

Imagine that - while they're in science class they're taught about the naturalistic process known as the scientific method. In math class they're "captive" to numbers, etc. The horror!

But these are all just individual tools that we use to organize knowledge - they don't all have to translate to all-encompassing world views. A naturalistic process is appropriate for the natural sciences, and can be applied by anyone, from the staunchest atheist to the most fundamentalist Christian.

I don't think I've ever seen a high-powered evolutionist lawyer. I suspect they're mythical, like unicorns. There haven't been enough big cases coming close enough together for people to specialize. Of course, that may be changing, unless Dover really was creationism's Waterloo (part IV - catch the next installation in, oh, perhaps 2018?)

Hmm. Hey radar, what happened to all the Dover school board members who were up for reelection (before the trial verdict)?

"In math class they're "captive" to numbers, etc. The horror!"Actually, I'll have to agree with that one. Someone should do something about that!

Sometimes I worry that we're heading for a Cultural Revolution-style bit, but really, sometimes I worry about almost everything, so I wouldn't credit it much.

"Huh? The genealogies I mentioned were from records from before anyone with Genesis knowledge happened by. "

I was mostly referring to the myths, here, but it applies to the genealogies too, unless you have written records conclusively dated from before - for Europe - Christianization. Take Beowulf. The dragon is not meant to be a dinosaur, but an actual issue in scholarly study of the text is how and in what ways the Christian author dealt with the recent pagan past.

"Did you ever think that if you had to go back 25 generations you would have a family tree of 33,554,432 ancestors?"

Isn't that amazing?! Basically, everyone is related pretty closely to everyone else; whether you get that from genetics or Genesis, it would just be nice if people could remember that . . . . although actually, given family relationships, maybe it's better they don't . . . racism, war, etc. are bad enough: if we throw in not talking to half of the world because what they said about our Og over half-a-haunch of mammoth thousands of years ago . . .*

* if that concrete! There's a whole branch of my family we've just started talking to again, two generations later - I think, literally, nobody knows what started it. At all.

"The genealogies I mentioned were from records from before anyone with Genesis knowledge happened by. So it is either a matter of unbelievable coincidences or history being verified. That such records were so well kept is indicative of how important they were to those peoples who kept them."

One of the sources mentioned ("We shall begin this section [The British Chronicles] of our study by considering the work of a British scholar named Nennius.") is Nennius, author of the Historia Brittonum. This work starts out as follows: "Nennius, the lowly minister and servant of the servants of God, by the grace of God, disciple of St. Elbotus*, to all the followers of truth sendeth health."

(* Or Elvod, bishop of Bangor, A.D. 755, who first adopted in the Cambrian church the new cycle for regulating Easter.)

May we dismiss this source as being one supposedly unaware of "Genesis knowledge"?

How much of the presented thesis derives from Nennius, or was filtered through him?

Your claim at the top of this comment rests entirely on a truthful answer to the previous two questions.

""The genealogies I mentioned were from records from before anyone with Genesis knowledge happened by."

There is supposedly more than one Nennius that people speak of, the 8th century gentleman who was writing in part on the urging of Elvodug (Who died in 809 AD). Nennius probably wrote his primary works before the end of the 8th century using the genealogies he had from the 5th century and before. Such genealogical records predated Christianity in the British Isles. The first influx into Britain was at the end of the 7th century.

The quote at the beginning of his text goes as follows: "'I, Nennius, pupil of the holy Elvodug, have undertaken to write down some extracts that the stupidity of the British cast out; for the scholars of the island of Britain had no skill ...I have therefore made a heap of all that I have found... "

In my post I give the best date I know for Nennius. Modernists try to establish a later date for Nennius, and part of the problem with that is that they would have him presenting records to an Elvodug who had already passed away.

Nennius was a compiler of genealogies and records that were extant at that time, records from well before Christians came to Britain. There are some remnants of those records available to us still, but most would be lost otherwise. Nennius' task was to compile these records that might otherwise have been lost.

Whatever controversy there may be over the dating or identity of Nennius, it is irrelevant here. It is the work itself, the Historia Britonum, that contains both the genealogical information and the acknowledgement that Nennius was a Christian at the time he was composing this history on available sources. We can thus assume he had knowledge of Genesis in doing so.

In absence of the material Nennius used as a source, it is entirely possible that he used Genesis as one of his sources. This is not a case of Genesis being independently verified.

Now the question is to what extent Bill Cooper based his investigations on Nennius's work.

Nennius was the source of British Genealogies. There were a number of genealogies that were listed other than those taken from his work alone.

It is remarkably unlikely that Nennius would use the Genesis account. There are some small differences that tell us this. But well beyond that, his purpose was to present the history of the Britons that he believed was being purposefully set aside by others. His work appears to be largely a matter of setting down all these different sources into one major work, setting down verbatim from the originals. The appearance of the Genesis account in his tomes would be obvious to all and to my knowledge no one has ever suggested that. Furthermore, where the genealogies from Nennius are from Bible times, the words of Nennius are different, including information not found in Genesis and omitting some names as well.

Nennius has been accused of copying down sources willy-nilly, including those some others considered dubious. Some even accused him of making stories out of thin air. Mostly, he is criticized for not editing his work but then that has helped modern students to get a glimpse of the original documents through Nennius.

In any event, should Nennius have used Genesis as a resource then we would find the words of Genesis written verbatim within his manuscripts, and that is not found.

Funny that Manetho, whose work is largely found in references to it in other documents, nevertheless has more credibility with modernists than does Nennius, with the majority of his output extant. Perhaps it is because Manetho can be used to stretch out the age of the Egyptian civilization while Nennius supports a younger age for the European peoples, specifically Britons?

I didn't say Nennius had less credibility, just that his account didn't back up your claims that his work served as an independent verification of Genesis and that his work was committed to writing before he came into contact with the Genesis account. This appears to be wishful thinking on your part.

Nennius also does not support a young earth; his account is just as compatible with an old earth.

I did not say that Nennius himself was before Christianity came to Britain and in fact I mentioned that he was an 8th century author. But what I did say that the genealogies and records he was recording were from beforehand and that statement remains true. Therefore since Nennius was known to be a compiler rather than an editor his work remains valid as stated.

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